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Vigilante justice, is it okay?

We are told that without laws, rules and regulations the world would dissolve into a state of anarchy.

Virtually every aspect of our lives is controlled by "authorities" whose diktats must be respected and followed, lest we are subjected to censure which can include fines, detention or imprisonment.

Such is the rule of law.

However, what happens when someone decides to take the law into their own hands?

Should those who engage in vigilante justice be exempt from the laws that apply to others?

The reason I ask this question is because we seem to have had a perfect example of vigilante justice this week.

In what I'm sure some would call "a special military operation" (oh the irony), the USA swooped on the sovereign nation of Venezuela and kidnapped its president (Maduro), whisking him away to the USA to face "justice".

Maduro is Widely regarded as a dictator who has created misery and human rights violations within Venezeuela and part of Trump's justification for this move, which resulted in the death of scores of people, was that he was freeing the people from this oppressive regime.

The fact that Maduro was the target of an attempted assassination might lend weight to the allegation that he is not acting in the best interests of his people, however we must remember that Donald Trump was also the subject of an assassination attempt (oh the irony).

The other justification was that "narcoterrorists" operating out of Venezuela and with the full endorsement of Maduro had delivered death and misery to hundreds of thousands of Americans through the trafficking of drugs.

Many reasonable people would likely support the USA's military action, its kidnapping and ultimately the prosecution of Maduro since the ends would allegedly justify the means.

However, to support such a suggestion cuts deeply into the whole concept of "rule of law" because the actions of the USA in this case are widely considered to be a breach of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter.

Some will argue that the UN Charter is simply an "agreement" rather than a law in the traditional sense and if it can be broken with impunity then one must question the entire viability of such international regulation.

So was this attack on the leader of a sovereign nation really justified and defensible on the basis of the justifications provided by the USA?

Personally I don't think so, even if the outcome is positive for both the people of the USA and the people of Venezuela. However, I believe that this move on the part of the USA was far less about protecting the peoples of these two nations than it was about sending messages and gaining access to US$17.3 TRILLION worth of oil reserves.

Trump says that US oil companies will be "investing" in Venezuela so as to bring wealth and prosperity to its people.

Why am I feeling more than a little cynical about that statement?

Well for a start, I doubt that any US oil company has philanthropy as its driving motivation so although there's little doubt that some of the profits will flow back to Venezuela and its people, I suspect that this is far more about making huge US corporations (with their equally large lobbying budgets) even richer.

Another key element of the USA's actions is that it is clearly designed to send a message to many other rogue military powers at a key time. The USA has just said "don't mess with us or else" and provided a very clear demonstration of its military might and a willingness to use it.

Iran, North Korea and even China will likely be closely scrutinizing the speed and efficiency with which the USA completely eliminated some sophisticated defensive technology and kidnapped the leader of a wealthy oil-rich nation. No doubt Trump is expecting that this will have a chilling effect on the leaders of any nation that might be tempted to take actions that could be construed as "anti-American".

The ultimate outcome of this whole situation is that the UN will be (once again) proven to be nothing but a toothless bunch of diplomats (most of who are appointed as a political favour) that can really no longer justify their existence.

This event also shows very clearly that now, "might is right", such that those with the best military can do whatever the hell they want because there's nobody to challenge them in any effective way.

Does that make the USA our new global dictator because nobody has the military to stop them doing whatever they want in the name of economic or national security? Oh the hypocrisy.

The danger in this situation is that the USA seems to think it can breach the sovereignty of other nations at will by using whatever justifications it dreams up. That must make the message Trump gives in this video at the 0:37 mark extremely worrying for Greenland:

Welcome to the new world order.

Carpe Diem folks!

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